Home Hunting Scams

Ok so part two of my home search is that amount of ads that are turning out to be scams. Let me see if I can lay these out for everyone. First I have been searching local papers and NRV online as well as http://blacksburg.craigslist.org/apa/. Craigslist of course being where 100% of the scams are being run. So lets let out the scams for you:

1. The first scam is not that bad in terms of taking money from you. It is a fake advertisement which is trying to get you sign up for a credit monitoring service. What they do is advertise an awesome house and a low price (tip off #1). Now these all have had some kind of firstnamelastnamerentals@gmail.com email to contact (a bot). Now the bot seems rudimentary but smart enough to catch enough keywords to send decent response back to early questions. Once you ask for more information or an application you will get a link to a credit reporting site and told to go sign up but do not send them anything. The credit reporting company will send them qualified applicants back. This is bogus, they are sending you to a site that signs you up for credit reporting from FreeCreditReports360.com via sites like http://www.creditreport180.com/ and http://www.freecredit-reports360.com/. They claim they will get "all qualified applicants" who apply.
2. The next scam was a little more ominous, it was a new take on the old Nigerian scams. They advertise properties are reasonable price. When you respond they send you back a poorly written response with an "Application" asking for basic information. I was suspicious of this because of how it was written, so I did some research and sure enough the e-mail came from Nigeria. So I sent back bogus information and low and behold I was approved, he just needed my checking account or credit card for billing and I could move in....
3. The last one I have run into was today from Ancor House Financial (www.anchorhousefinancial.com). These guys at first sounded great, you take over some home that is in forclosure. Basically they sign you up and you can look through properties on their site and find one you like. Once you do and go inspect it you simply take over the morgage as a rent to own deal. At first it seemed pretty resonable until the catch came in...you have to pay 199.00 for a title transfer up front, not after you find the home. They claim of course if you do not find the home you like they will refund the 199.00 but a quick google search proved that to be an enormous lie with a lot of examples of people getting ripped off by these guys.

So anyway I will continue my home search, hopefully someone will read this and find it useful. Perhaps help you avoid these scams if you happen to use craigslist to look for a house.